Nara
I decided to go to Nara as a day trip from Kyoto, about 50 minutes on the train to get there and the weather had suddenly changed after the last few days of cloud and rain. Sunny and hot, and that was 9:00 AM…
Nara is home to a large number of old temples, 8 of which are world heritage sites. The main attraction here is the Todai-Ji temple, which is the largest wooden building in the world. It houses a giant bronze buddha inside and is guarded by huge lifelike wooden carved statues by the main gate. This is the coolest temple I’ve been to yet, the sheer size of the buddha is astounding. On the way to that I passed a couple pagodas, one five stories, is the 2nd highest anywhere.
Most of the temples in Nara are in this quite large park, which is inhabited by (according to the guidebooks I didn’t count them) more than 1200 deer. There have been deer there since ancient times and now they are apparently official national treasures. You can buy biscuits to feed them, I refrained, though watching people get scared by them while holding the biscuits was entertaining. Some of the park is through a wooded area, lined with more stone lanterns than I’d seen anywhere yet, really cool vibe to it. After walking around pretty much the entire park all afternoon and checking out the main temples, abd the best Japanese garden I’ve seen yet, I found a noodle shop and had some udon noodles with shitaki mushrooms, the mushrooms were the best tasting mushrooms I’ve ever eaten.
Good day in Nara, and now I’m sitting back at the hostel (which is the best I’ve ever stayed in), waiting for laundry to dry and deciding where to go tomorrow. I’m leaving here, but I have no idea where I’m going yet…
Tags: Japan, Travel
Adam
Leave a Reply